 | |  |
Notes
According to G. Agnelli and G. Ravegnani, Annali delle edizioni ariostee (1933), these unauthorized reprints numbered fifteen. This information needs to be re-examined in the light both of our present knowledge of sixteenth-century Italian printing, and of a proper distinction between the concepts of edition and issue, but, even if only approximate, clearly indicates the great success of the Furioso with its early readers. I take this opportunity of acknowledging the generous support of the British Academy, which enabled me to examine the copies of the 1532 Furioso in European libraries, and of the American Philosophical Society, which made possible a visit to the United States to examine the Harvard and Pierpont Morgan copies. A list of copies of the edition is given in Appendix A.
My examination of the 1532 Furioso has been selective, not comprehensive, and has focused on those elements of its printing history which are likely to prove especially interesting and instructive to my Italian colleagues (in particular, I have not carried out a detailed analysis of the type). It was occasioned by an invitation to participate in the II Seminario Internazionale sulla trasmissione dei testi a stampa nel periodo moderno, organised by the Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, a study group of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, and by the Università degli Studi della Tuscia, and held in Rome-Viterbo on June 27-29, 1985. The resulting paper was read to the Seminar on 28 June 1985 and will appear in its Atti. The present note is an English version, substantially re-arranged and rewritten, of that paper.
See M. Catalano, Vita di Ludovico Ariosto ricostruita su nuovi documenti (1930-31), I, 428-434; 595-605.
Catalano, II, 150-151. In fact, as Ariosto was to clarify years later, all that was actually ordered and received from Salò for the printing of the 1516 edition was 200 reams of paper, not the huge quantity mentioned in the Cardinal's letter, which seems intended to satisfy Arisoto's needs for many years.
Catalano, II, 149-150; L. Ariosto, Tutte le opere. Volume III. Satire. Erbolato. Lettere, ed. C. Segre, G. Ronchi and A. Stella (1984), 157-160.
The relevant part of the letter reads: "Non eri l'altro vene in questa terra mess. Ludovico Ariosto, gentilhomo ferrarese, quale à portato una capsa di libri, li qualli lui à composto sopra a Orlando, ch'è quasi tanto volume come l'Innamoramento di Orlando, et lui l'à intitulato Orlando Furioso, quale è uno bello libro, più bello che non è lo Inamoramento di Orlando. Lui ne ha donato uno al Ill.mo S. v.ro patre et uno a madama v.ra matre et uno al R.mo Cardinale; li altri lui li vole fare vendere. Se piace a la S.V. che io ve ne manda uno, io li mandorò (sic), perché io so che quella si dileta di havere di questi libri, maxime una Opera nova et così bella como è questa. Como lui li facia vendere, io ne comprarò uno et il farò ligare et il mandarò ala S.V." (Catalano, II, 158).
For this letter see Ariosto, Tutte le opere, III, p. 177. The relevant part reads: "Per m. Gian Iacomo Bardelone ho havuto sei lire di nostra moneta, li quali vostra M.tia mi ha rimessi, credo, per parte de li denari che si hanno d'havere dal venditore de li miei Orlandi a Verona. Di che ringratio quella, ma mi paron pochi a quelli ch'io aspettava; e non posso credere che quel libraro non li habbia expediti tutti, perché in nessuno altro luogo di Italia non so dove ne restino più da vendere: e se fin qui non gli ha venduti, non credo che più li venda. Per questo seria meglio che il libraro li rimettesse qui, perché subito troverei di expedirli, perché me ne son dimandati ogni dì."
There are, however, two contracts with booksellers, one in Genoa and the other in Ferrara itself, which suggest that the author owned the 1521 edition as he had owned its predecessor, but did not have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to concern himself in the same way with its sale (Catalano, II, 232-233; 236-237). There is also a fragmentary but highly suggestive document of March 1523 certifying the repayment by Ariosto of a loan apparently received in November 1520 "ad merchationem in arte stanpandi libros" (Catalano, II, 246).
For these letters see Ariosto, Tutte le opere, III, 452-453; 458; 461. The 1532 Furioso is a quarto in eights, collating A-Z a-h, and thus comprises sixty-two sheets. It is quite likely that Ariosto, with the eternal optimism of the author-publisher, envisaged an edition of this size. The first edition, which contained sixty-six sheets, would, if printed on 200 reams, as Ariosto stated, have comprised about 1500 copies; as has been said, it ran out in less than five years. Between 1516 and 1532 the Furioso had become famous throughout Italy, and beyond.
For the date of this letter, see C. Dionisotti, "Notizie ariostesche," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 106 (1935), 224-229. The text, with the erroneous date of 8 July 1534, is given in Catalano, II, 344-345. The relevant part of the letter reads: "Del quale privilegio ha potuto poco godere, perché, havendo a pena fornito di stampare, s'ammalò, et dopo l'essere stato VIII mesi infermo finalmente s'è morto, come V.S. havrà potuto intendere: et così non solo non ha potuto ristampare il libro di novo, come havea in animo di fare, parendogli, come era, d'esser stato mal servito in questa ultima stampa et assassinato; ma per la sua malattia sono restati i tre quarti dei libri in mano de gli heredi, che non si sono venduti." Other evidence is to be found in a draft of Ariosto's will made during his last illness, in which he left to his son Virginio "omnes libros intitulatos Orlando furioso ipsius D.ni Testatoris, existentes penes ipsam D.nam Alexandram [his wife] quotquot fuerint" (Catalano, II, 333). We also have a note in the Estense archives of the payment in March 1532 of 300 lire to Tommaso di Salò on Ariosto's behalf for the purchase of paper (Catalano, II, 323).
See Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed Debenedetti (1928), III, 415-426. The figure of thirty-seven excludes the numerous variants found in the cancelled leaf, for which see below.
The decision to collate selectively rather than comprehensively was taken when it became apparent, for reasons which will emerge later, that my researches were not likely to make a significant contribution to the critical text of the Furioso. As my control I have used transparent xeroxes of the John Rylands copy (no. 14). I have collated word for word copies no. 6 and 13. For the remaining paper copies my approach has been to begin by collating those formes in which I had not yet found any variants, and then to collate other formes as the pattern of variants suggested and time allowed. Every one of the paper copies collated for the first time has yielded at least one state previously not documented. The copies on vellum (nos. 8, 11, 12, and 23) are not susceptible to collation by my control xeroxes, as the dimensions of their type-pages are several millimetres smaller than those of the paper copies, owing to the greater shrinkage rate of vellum over the years; consequently, I have collated them only spasmodically. There is no doubt that they were printed from the same setting of type and concurrently with the paper copies; indeed, one of the peripheral points of interest to have emerged concerning the printing of this edition is that in the opening gatherings the vellum sheets occasionally went through the press early enough to pick up uncorrected states of a few formes, but after gathering G, where in the inner forme of the inner sheet the group of vellum sheets went through the press after the first round of press corrections but before the second, the printers saw to it that the vellum sheets always went through the press late enough to avoid any uncorrected states, even in formes in which there was more than one round of press-corrections.
See A. K. McIlwraith, "Marginalia on Press-corrections in Books of the Early Seventeenth Century,", Library, 5th. ser., 4 (1950), 238-248.
On the hypothesis of printing and perfecting part of the print-run of a sheet as a day's work see P. Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (1972), 132.
For recent presentations of the printing process in early continental printing see J. Veyrin-Forrer, "Fabriquer un livre au xvie siècle," in Histoire de l'édition française, ed. H. J. Martin and R. Chartier, I (1982), 279-301; J. Rychner, "Le travail de l'atelier," ibid., II (1984), 42-61.
Ariosto, Orlando furioso (1928), III, 406-414. The fact that Debenedetti regarded these four leaves as forming a "half-sheet" does not detract from his contribution to the solving of the problem they pose. Though the fount used is the same, the two settings of type are immediately apparent when one is superimposed on the other, as with transparent xeroxes, or with the Hinman Collating Machine.
This assertion cannot be documented without a thoroughgoing linguistic discussion, which would be out of place here. A few examples are: the treatment of double consonants (always a delicate matter in the language of north Italian writers) and of the diphthongs ie and uo, more "irregular" in Type I than elsewhere in the edition, and the presence of forms such as dui, altrimente, arricciosse, corrected to duo, altrimenti, arricciossi in Type II, in conformity with the language of the rest of the sheets of the 1532 edition.
This is shown by some forty shared misprints elsewhere in the work. Of course, for the additional material the author must have supplied manuscript copy. Some autograph fragments of this material have survived, though not the copy sent to the printers.
The fourth vellum copy, no. 11, the only surviving vellum copy with Type II of inner A, is a presentation copy for Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, and presumably remained at Ferrara in the weeks following the publication of the edition. It has a number of other peculiarities, including a non-typographical title-page and an unique setting of type for f. A2r, the first page of text. One of the vellum copies with Type I, no. 23, bears on a guard-leaf a note in a sixteenth-century hand stating that it was given by the author to the poetess Veronica Gambara, who lived at Correggio, some 50 miles from Ferrara; see my article, "L'esemplare già Charlemont dell'Orlando furioso del 1532," Lettere italiane, 14 (1962), 441-450.
I have so far been unable to identify the watermark of Type II in copy no. 9, the only Type II paper copy readily available. It is possible that analysis of the types would provide further evidence, but I doubt whether the effort involved (for which see A. Hammond, "The White Devil in Nicholas Okes's Shop," Studies in Bibliography, 39 (1986), 135-176, particularly pp. 159-161) would be justified in this case.
Another indication of an early lack of rhythm which was gradually eliminated as printing progressed can be found in the treatment of the vellum sheets (see note 13); also relevant is the gradual establishment of a pattern of press-correction, as discussed above.
The linguistic variants of this forme all refer to phenomena identical with those shown by the variants of inner A (see n. 18), e.g. insertion of the Tuscan diphthongs ie and uo (rivera > riviera, leva > lieva, lochi > luoghi, giova > giuova), -e > -i (pare > pari).
It is interesting that three hundred years later another great north-Italian writer, Alessandro Manzoni, in preparing the publication at his own expense of the definitive edition of his novel I promessi sposi, the text of which had been subjected to a similar process of linguistic revision lasting several years, stipulated, in a ferocious contract with his printers drawn up by a lawyer friend, the right, which he exercised to the full, to make as many corrections on the proofs as he thought necessary. Manzoni's contract, and many other documents concerning this edition, are reproduced in M. Parenti, Manzoni editore: storia di una celebre impresa manzoniana illustrata su documenti inediti o poco noti (1945). The edition was printed on one or more large Stanhope presses; numerous proofs, ranging from galleys to perfected sheets, are preserved in the Biblioteca Braidense, Milan; for further information, see my articles "Galley Proofs in an Italian Edition of 1840-42," The Library, 6th ser., 2 (1980), 469-470; and "Per la stampa dell'edizione definitiva dei Promessi Sposi," Aevum, 56 (1982), 377-394.
During a discussion at the 1985 Seminar, and afterwards privately, Paul Needham expressed the opinion that the two typographical settings of sheet inner A of the 1532 Furioso, because of their distribution among surviving copies, were unlikely to represent a cancellandum and its cancellans, as both Debenedetti and I maintain, and should probably be attributed to the desire to produce further copies of the sheet. I have to admit that the distribution evidence, "arranged vigorously", to borrow a phrase from Dr Needham's memorable article on the printing of the Mainz Catholicon (PBSA, 76 [1982], 395-456), does point in that direction. However, I believe that in this case the distribution evidence is outweighed by the bibliographical and textual considerations I have outlined, which are valid both against Debenedetti and against the theory of an increase in the print-run, and which, under the stimulus of Dr Needham's comments, for which I am very grateful, I have arranged as vigorously as I am able.
See R. B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927), p. 209. The phrase also appears in the first version of McKerrow's manual, the article "Notes on Bibliographical Evidence for Literary Students and Editors of English Works of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 12 (1914), 211-318.
I owe this information to Carlo Dionisotti, whose informant was Debenedetti himself. From the same source I understand that Debenedetti subsequently purchased the copy. Its present owner, Prof. Cesare Segre, is Debenedetti's nephew.
On this copy see my article "A Copy in Sheets of the Orlando furioso of 1532," in course of publication in La Bibliofilia. The maximum margin measurements of copy no. 21 are 30mm for the bottom margin and 19mm for the outer margin, as against 35mm and 25mm in copy no. 10. My examination of the latter did not include the watermark, which is difficult to identify in quartos. Indeed, had it not been for the chance of finding a copy in sheets, I doubt if I would know for certain what the watermarks of the paper used for the 1532 Furioso were. Further work prior to the full publication of my results will include an attempt to establish the identity of the paper used in copies 9 and 10.
The fact, as already stated, that paper copies other than copies 9 and 10 all have a varying number of formes, from nine to thirty, in their uncorrected state, coupled with the number of sheets involved (sixty-two), makes the unintentional assembly of a "perfect" copy implausible.
The fact that Type II of inner A is only present, among the paper copies, in the two which have all the corrected states of the rest of the volume is further, if indirect, proof that it was intended as a cancellans, and is not the result of a decision to run off further copies of the sheet.
For proof-reading in sixteenth-century continental printing, see the references in my article, "Introduzione alla bibliografia testuale," La Bibliofilia, 82 (1980), 151-180, especially pp. 167-168. As for perfect copies, even McKerrow, after the statement quoted on a previous page (see n. 26), expressed the following disclaimer: "I do not deny that it is possible that a few sheets in the most correct state might be selected to be made up into presentation copies for the author's friends," though adding "but I have certainly never come across any evidence of such a practice, nor does it seem at all likely" (Introduction, pp. 209-210). A young British scholar, Neil Harris, is planning a study, similar to that which I have undertaken on the 1532 Furioso, on the printing of the 1516 and 1521 editions of the work, as part of a three-year perfezionamento at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.
This list comprises copies of the 1532 Furioso utilized by Debenedetti or by me. From Debenedetti's notes, it appears that he located copies 20 and 21 too late to be able to incorporate their readings in his edition. Copies 15 and 16 did not become available for public consultation (indeed, copy no. 16 did not actually reach the Vatican) until after the publication of Debenedetti's edition. From information supplied to me in 1961 by the staff of the Houghton Library, Harvard, before copy no. 24 left their possession, it is clear that it belongs to Type I, but the rest of its readings are now unfortunately lost. The copies in this list are printed on paper, unless otherwise stated. Press marks are given in square brackets. I would be very grateful for information about copies of the edition not included in this list. I should add that the copy given in the Library of Congress Union Catalogue as belonging to the library of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute is a "ghost", and that the copies stated in the same source to be found in the library of Duke University are photocopies of some of the items listed here.
| | |